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Proto-Ē̂dentiaguen
Proto-Ē̂dentiaguen is an archaic and extinct Ydtobogȧntiaky language that was spoken in southern Amalan east of the Iriguden River and north of the Ydtobogȧn Peninsula. It was one of four theorized proto-languages to split off from Proto-Ydtobogȧntiaky. Some of its daughter languages were influenced by Latian languages which expanded southeast of their original urheimat. Phonology Proto-Ē̂dentiaguen did not make a distinction between voiced and voiceless consonants like its predecessor. Both tables have romanizations for each phoneme. Consonants Vowels Many vowels changed and some vowels merged due to sound change. The result was the development of a mid-central vowel /ə/. Each of the eight vowels can be long i.e. kōn /ko:n/ Apophony There are some nouns and verbs in Proto-Ē̂dentiaguen that undergo vowel apophony. The nouns of this type are mostly words that changed from their Proto-Ydtobogȧntiaky form in an inexplicable way, part of which was losing the word final , as these words almost always descended from the old third declension. The change occurs in the genitive, instrumental, and locative cases. The verbs of this type are mostly ditransitive verbs. The change occurs in all non-finite forms and negative forms. Here, both parts of speech affected by this may be referred to as "short-A". They are referred to in Proto-Ē̂dentiaguen as tebīdarru (pl. tebīdarrū), which itself is a short-A noun. The affected vowel in each of these words is always the last vowel of the word, which is never word-final in these cases. Any vowel (except for /i/ or /i:/) can go through this change, so this allows for a noticeable amount of short-As in the lexicon. The changes are shown below with noun examples in the ergative singular and genitive singular. ɑ-o b'a'''lka-b'o'lke ''ɑ:-o: m'ā'''na-m'ō'ne ''ɛ-e e'ga-'ê'ge ''ɛ:-e: dē'ŋa-d'ē̂'ŋe ''e-i g'ê'''ra-g'i're ''e:-i: t'ē̂'la-t'ī'''le ''ə-ɨ b'è'''nta-b'y'nte ''ə:-ɨ: d'ḕ'''ra-d'ȳ're ''o-u ab'o'''ra-ab'u're ''o:-u: il'ō'''da-il'ū'de ''u-ɨ int'u'''ra-int'y're ''u:-ɨ: kib'ū'''ga-kib'ȳ'ge ''ɨ-i ub'y'''da-ub'i'de ''ɨ:-i: d'ȳ'''da-d'ī'de This change resulted in disambiguation between the genitive and dative cases not entirely based on context, and because of this remained in many later languages and spread to many other nouns. In some languages, it became a regular marker of the genitive and other cases in all nouns. In verbs, although the process was more arbitrary and purposeless, apophony remained in many later languages as well. Stress Proto-Ē̂dentiaguen had a somewhat simple stress rule. Stress usually fell on the antepenultimate, penultimate, or final syllable. In other words, any of the last three syllables in a word may be stressed. Usually, the penultimate (second-to-last) syllable was stressed, although this wasn't always the case. The antepenultimate (third-to-last) syllable was stressed if: *the syllable nucleus contains the only long vowel in the word *the final two syllables are separated by an approximant *the word contains 5+ syllables and does not meet '''any' of the criteria for a stressed final syllable The final (last) syllable was stressed if: *the syllable's nucleus is a long vowel, and the nucleus of the penultimate isn't a long vowel as well *the syllable contains 4+ consonants (including semivowels) Monosyllables Phonologically, a stressed syllable is notably lower pitch (and longer if it did not already contain a long vowel or a diphthong) compared to unstressed syllables. Monosyllables could be pronounced as stressed or unstressed, depending on the context and part of speech. Although there was technically no specific stress rule in terms of monosyllables, a set of regular (and, as agreed upon by most, accurate) rules has been theorized. Monosyllables were pronounced stressed if: * the syllable nucleus is a long vowel (except /ə:/ <ḕ>) * the nucleus is /ə:/ <ḕ> and does not meet any of the criteria for an unstressed monosyllable * the word is a verb * the syllable nucleus is a diphthong * it does not meet any of the criteria for an unstressed monosyllable Monosyllables were pronounced unstressed if: *the word is a postposition or particle, regardless of meeting the criteria for an unstressed monosyllable *the speaker is speaking much more quickly than usual, regardless of meeting the criteria for an unstressed monosyllable Verbs Person and number were not marked in Proto-Ē̂dentiaguen verbs. Unlike nouns, verbs had only one inflectional paradigm. More verbs than in Proto-Ydtobogȧntiaky are irregular, and due to sound change many regular verbs became moderately or heavily irregular. Some examples of irregular verbs are et, rèk, timitē̂r, dimet. Verbs distinguished four things: tense, aspect, mood, and voice. Unlike other related languages of the time, Proto-Ē̂dentiaguen retained all tense, aspect, mood, and voice distinctions. Tense, Aspect, and Mood The three tenses are: anterior past, past, and non-past. Proto-Ē̂dentiaguen: idirdiguden anlā egar, idirdiguden egar, têdirdiguden egar The anterior past was used to express the pluperfect and the remote past. The past was used to express the perfect and the recent past. The non-past expressed the present or future. The three aspects are: repetitive, initial, and progressive. Proto-Ē̂dentiaguen: dunien idīdugen egar, īndērdlèimōgen egar, ḕren idīguden egar The repetitive expressed habituality and iterativity. The initial expressed the inchoative and prospective aspects. The progressive expressed both the continuous and the progressive. The six moods are: indicative, subjunctive, optative, conditional, potential, and imperative. Proto-Ē̂dentiaguen: nibarannuōpuen nibaram, tembarannuōpuen nibaram, dīmetenuōpuen nibaram, dūminnenuōpuen nibaram, ȳdulupuen nibaram, rinillynuōpuen nibaram The interrogative was not considered a separate mood, and unlike other moods was expressed using the auxiliary adverb kiba. Voice The three voices (there may have been more, though) are: active, passive, and antipassive. Proto-Ē̂dentiaguen: ōdīmen rêbtan, timitē̂rdilèimen rêbtan, īuaddilèimen rêbtan Conjugation Proto-Ē̂dentiaguen verbs conjugate according to only one paradigm and have become more irregular. Conjugation occurs with some variation, as the root of the verb may change as a result of conjugation. Here, all of the possible conjugational suffixes are shown in a series of tables. AP stands for anterior past, P stands for past, and NP stands for non-past. Active Forms Verbs conjugated for active voice are slightly shorter than for other voices because active voice, unlike the others, is unmarked. Passive Forms Antipassive Forms Non-Finite Forms Verbs had a regular(ish) way of forming non-finite forms, such as participles, from nouns. In the non-finite, some verbs underwent apophony. Participles Proto-Ē̂dentiaguen had a set of participles, one for each tense-voice combination, of which there were nine. Participles were made by adding a suffix to an unconjugated verb. Sometimes, participles were used to make derived nouns from verbs. This form was made by deleting the word-final . The passive participles also changed the word-final to , i.e. ridiguda (participle suffix) > ridigun (nominalizing suffix). The anterior past participles corresponded to the perfect/past participles of other languages. The past participles corresponded to the present participles of other languages. The non-past participles corresponded to the future participles of other languages. Infinitives Similar to the participles, all three tenses "shifted" later in time when used to describe infinitives. The anterior past represented the perfect, the past represented the present, and the non-past represented the future. Negatives A negative verb was made with the prefix ti-'' before vowels (except for , , <ī>, and <ū>) and ''te-'' before consonants. If the negative prefix was before a <ī> or <ū>, the <ī> or <ū> was shortened to a semivocalic or . Sometimes, due to sound change, the negative prefix was different or slightly changed the verb root. Although there is a rule to this, it's best to simply memorize each negative form rather than attempt to recreate it. In phrases such as "He didn't take any food" or "They don't have flowers", a negative adjective made from ''ībia "one" and the negative prefix was used. For example, in tedīrrênnè rēk tē̂biad erȳla "They don't have flowers", tē̂biad (which really means "not one") is used with the accusative singular of the word for flower instead of using only the accusative plural. So, the phrase can be glossed as NEG-have-IND.PROG.NPST.ACT 3PL.ERG NEG-one-ACC.SG flower-ACC.SG, or "They don't have not one flower", and is technically a double negative. Nouns The ablative case was replaced in part by postpositions. Declensional affixes of all three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) merged. Due to this, only some suffixes from each of the inflectional paradigms were used in a new merged inflectional paradigm. The five declensions of Proto-Ydtobogȧntiaky went through significant change in Ē̂dentiaguen languages due to sound change and less disambiguation resulting from less cases. This and the loss of genders caused great similarity in many declinational suffixes, which led to even less cases in some later languages. Also, many declinational suffixes disappeared. They were replaced mostly by their third declension counterparts, although some were taken from the fourth declension of Proto-Ydtobogȧntiaky nouns. Over time, the original five declensions merged into a single declension with little variety. Some endings used in the single paradigm are very similar, especially the dative and genitive suffixes, which caused some later languages to use an oblique case made from the accusative (and dative, in some cases) morphemes. Remember that the terms "short-A", "long-end", and "weak-end" are only used because of their short names. These terms are not likely to be used at all except in articles related to Ydtobogȧntiaky languages. Declension The table below shows how nouns with a root-final consonant are declined. Nouns with a root-final are declined almost identically, except the final is replaced by the other endings and the instrumental plural suffix is replaced by ''-a'' i.e. rid'a'' eye-INS.PL (from ''ridèr'' eye-INS.SG). Some verbs underwent apophony when declined for certain cases. In cases where the locative suffixes cause a violation of the phonotactics, an <è> is added before adding the suffix, i.e. tiagède mouth-LOC.SG (tiaga + ''-è-'' + ''-de'') Root Changes Some nouns changed the root-final consonant when declined for certain cases. This originated mostly from sound change, but some nouns gained this trait seemingly arbitrarily. Gemination Nouns that undergo gemination due to declension were called long-end, and are referred to in Proto-Ē̂dentiaguen as bȳdêlbu (pl. bȳdêlbū). These are mostly nouns that underwent heavy sound change causing it to have a word-final geminate. In unaffected nouns, most geminate stops were completely shortened, and geminate semivowels became either short semivowels or a long vowel. Fricatives and /l/, however, retained gemination in some cases. Over half of all nouns have a root-final consonant, and a small amount of those are affected by this type of apophony. This is because geminate consonants, according to Proto-Ē̂dentiaguen phonotactics, are only allowed intervocalically. However, this is different for nasals. All nasal-final nouns (which make up almost half of all consonant-final nouns) are long-end, except for the short-A nouns and most words of foreign origin. The root-final consonant of all long-end nouns is doubled before marking any case, except for the instrumental plural and the locative. Even if a schwa is added before a locative suffix due to it violating the phonotactics, the root-final consonant of a long-end noun is not doubled. Some examples are shown below. mi'gg'u (absolutive singular), mi'''ggū (absolutive plural), mi'gg'e (dative singular), mi'g' (instrumental plural), mi'g'ède (locative singular) giō'll'u (absolutive singular), giō'll'ū (absolutive plural), giō'll'e (dative singular), giō'l' (instrumental plural), giō'l'''de (locative singular) tebīda'rr'u (absolutive singular), tebīda'rr'ū (absolutive plural), tebīda'rr'e (dative singular), tebīdo'r''' (instrumental plural), tebīdo'r'ède (locative singular) krḕ'nn'u (absolutive singular), krḕ'nn'ū (absolutive plural), krḕ'nn'e (dative singular), krḕ'n' (instrumental plural), krḕ'n'''de (locative singular) Lenition Nouns that undergo lenition due to declension were called ''weak-end, and are referred to in Proto-Ē̂dentiaguen as mōdêlbu (pl. mōdêlbū). These are mostly nouns that end in plosives preceded by a vowel or a semivowel. Few nouns that end in said phonemes aren't affected by this. Those were mostly words of foreign origin, some of which became long-end nouns. Sound change caused most if not all intervocalic plosives to become fricatives. Over half of all nouns have a root-final consonant, and a small amount of those are affected by this type of apophony. This change applies to verbs and adjectives as well, but to a lesser extent. The root-final consonant of all weak-end nouns is "weakened" to a fricative of the same place of articulation before marking any case except for the instrumental plural, which is often the bare root. Usually, weak-end nouns not ending in /k/ are also short-A nouns. A schwa is added before a locative suffix (except in weak-end nouns ending in /t/) due to it violating the phonotactics, which does not allow two different consecutive fricatives. Some examples are shown below. ilō'd'''u (absolutive singular), ilō'd'ū (absolutive plural), ilō'd'e (dative singular), ilū't''' (instrumental plural), ilū'd'''de (locative singular) di'g'u (absolutive singular), di'g'ū (absolutive plural), di'g'e (dative singular), di'k''' (instrumental plural), di'g'ède (locative singular) ru'b'''u (absolutive singular), ru'b'ū (absolutive plural), ru'b'e (dative singular), ry'p''' (instrumental plural), ry'b'ède (locative singular) Category:Ydtobogȧntiaky languages